12:58 pm | 07 May 2003 | dodgin' the draft

My father never fought in the Vietnam War. When he went to register, he pulled open the door of the draft office, ducked, and stooped inside. The bored desk clerk looked up.

"How tall are you, son?" the clerk said.
"Six eight," my dad said, "175 pounds."
"Get a doctor�s note that says that, and you�re exempt," the clerk yawned, and turned back to his newspaper.

Dad got the doctor�s note that day and was deemed Disabled By Reason of Height�the Army literally declared him too big a target. He simply wouldn�t fit in a foxhole.

Later they revised the standards and he is currently classified as F-4, which means he'll be called to serve after the women and children--you know, at the last-ditch point when they'll roll out the cripples and the mental patients and the toothless wheelchair-bound grandpas armed only with hoes and rusty spanners. There my dad will be, bald, mustachioed, standing telephone-pole-tall and proud in the middle of the m�l�e. Probably by then i'll be fighting, too, my asylum-issue hospital gown flapping around my thighs as i go to stab the, uh, the zombie hordes. clm.

Monday night:
Man (getting out of ridiculously huge modified Navigator with, like, forty-inch rims): "What's a hot woman like you doing in an alley like this?"
Me (clearly am walking dog in alley like this): "What's a fucker like you doing even looking at me, much less talking to me, like that? That's so disrespectful. GOD."
Man: "_____" (something unintelligible in mangled Spanish)
Me (glaring): "DIE."
Guinness (threateningly, for such a wimpy dog): "Snarl. Growl."